Summary: This bill seeks to help restore public confidence by eliminating “pay to play” opportunities (or appearances thereof) in our state government through additional campaign finance regulations and restrictions on those with business before the state.

Why This Matters: Recent “pay to play” scandals across the country have severely damaged public confidence in elected officials, leaving honest elected officials trying to do the right thing looking tainted in the process. Our current campaign finance system sets elected officials up for numerous conflict of interest problems (or even just the appearance of such) because campaigns are often funded by the exact same people who are looking for something in return - a contract, a tax break, or a piece of legislation.

We need to give the public reason to be confident that their elected officials are making decisions based on what is best for the people - not what’s best for their campaign coffers.

This legislation seeks to reduce the influence of special interest money in politics, and make it clear to all that you don’t have to be a big campaign donor to get a fair shake from your government.

What this Bill Would Do: This bill seeks to help restore public confidence and reduce the influence of special interest money by:

• Prohibiting lobbyists from soliciting campaign contributions
• Prohibiting principals of state contractors (with contracts of $50K or greater) and their immediate family from giving or soliciting contributions for statewide and legislative candidates for office.
• Changing the expenditure standard to limit some of the more extravagant expenditures.
• Changing the contribution limits from per year to per election.